


I just wanted you to know, that baby you're the best

by LonelySparrow



Category: One Direction
Genre: Character Death, Love, M/M, Marriage, Mentions of Sex, but its like a background thing, it is described in somewhat detail though so
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-02
Updated: 2014-02-02
Packaged: 2018-01-10 21:13:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,547
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1164578
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LonelySparrow/pseuds/LonelySparrow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>All Harry's ever known is sex. All Niall's ever known is love. And then they meet and realize they both can be happy again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I just wanted you to know, that baby you're the best

**Author's Note:**

> There is a character death in here that is described in somewhat detail. It's cancer related, but not specifically stated as to the kind of cancer. Please don't read if this will trigger you in anyway. I want you readers safe above all else, okay? Thank you for reading. Please do not show to any persons involved/related/managed. This is just for entertainment purposes.

His name was Zayn. He was a few months older than I. Born on A641 in the middle of a snow flurry because he just couldn’t wait, as usual. He was infinitely more attractive than I could ever hope to be. Should have been in magazines or had statues put up in the park dedicated to him. 

He had hair the color of ink and he always smelled like old books and grass and rain. He was a poet and a musician and an artist. He was my best friend. And the love of my life. I’ll never find another like him. He knew my favorite songs, backwards and forwards, and would sing them to me when I was sick. He held my hand when we were at the doctor’s because he knows I get nervous. He wiped my sweaty brow after I threw up my bad takeout that one time and didn’t even wince when I threw up a few millimeters from his favorite shoes. 

He knew I hated the winter because I always forgot my coat. He’d bring it by work for me so I wouldn’t freeze on the walk home. He knew how I took my tea (two sugars, splash of milk, dash of honey if I had a cold). He loved my family and they loved him, probably more than they loved me. 

We were married in autumn because that was his favorite season. We got a cat. It got hit by a cab a few months after we got him, and Zayn held my hand and let me cry all over his shoulder when I found the poor scraggly thing dead in the road just up the street from our pokey flat. He knew everything. He knew more about me than I probably knew myself. He was my forever and my happy ending. We were perfect. 

And then the bastard died.

He died! He left me. He got sick and then he died.

He went alone to hear the initial diagnosis. Didn’t even tell me he was sick. That’s what hurts the most. I didn’t even notice something was wrong with him. He felt sick, went to medical, and discovered that he had a brain tumor. 

I was there when they told him it was inoperable, though. He didn’t cry. Just nodded his head and accepted it. I was numb. I couldn’t cry, I couldn’t eat, I couldn’t sleep. I was useless. He needed comfort, and all I did was wallow about in pain. They started chemo in the hopes that the tumor might shrink and give him more time. He got even sicker. Would throw up all of the time, cry because the pain was so bad. He told me to leave him. He told me we should get a divorce so I didn’t have to watch him suffer.

I cried so hard he had to take me to medical because I had an asthma attack. When I finally regained my breath, I called him dumb and stupid and a lot of other nonsensical names and we had slow, sleepy sex. He was exhausted by the end, but happy. And that’s what I wanted. I wanted him happy. And safe. 

He died in his sleep unexpectedly. I had went to sleep wrapped around him and woke up to a cold body and a boney, gray hand. 

Everyone wanted to admit me to a psychology ward temporarily. I walked around like a zombie. I didn’t cry. I didn’t eat. I didn’t sleep. I didn’t yell. I did nothing. Like I was some kind of frozen android robot thing. 

On the day of the funeral, I had to watch his mum and his sisters and his dad cry. I had to watch my mum cry and I had to watch this ugly box that held my world inside it be lowered into the earth. After everyone went home, I lay in the mud in my suit and grieved like never before. Zayn was six feet below, but he never felt so far away. The grave staff were kind enough to let me cry and scream until I exhausted myself and then one of them took me to their car and drove me home. 

Everyone told me to go back home to Ireland or move in with a friend. They told me I should get out of the flat. Sell it. Burn it. Anything but stay there. They said it didn’t help me. Made me sicker. They said I should start over. But I could still feel Zayn there. He was in the walls, in the stack of magazines on the kitchen table and in the bottom drawer in the bathroom beside his razor and his stupid hair wax that smelled like cherries. Zayn was still there, and I couldn’t leave him.  
\-----  
Harry knew lust. Harry knew pleasure. Fevered kisses and nails that rake down his back and leave scratches. He knew the right spots to suck or bite or squeeze. He knew half-choked moans and bursts of intense pleasure. He knew how to roll his hips and twist his tongue. He knew eyes with blown wide pupils, so intense they were black and near wet with tears. He knew thrusts and grunts and anger. He knew knees pressed to chests and naked backs against naked stomachs. Harry knew pleasure.

Harry knew sex—in all of its forms. Wall sex, car sex, shower sex, sex in semipublic places. Sex that probably shouldn’t be happening, because oh look someone is right there. He knew blowjobs in club restrooms, and careless fucks in college dormitories. 

Harry didn’t know anything about love. He thought it was a bunch of bullshit and a pointless, waste of time. Harry knew sex and only sex. Harry knew sex with girls and sex with boys and sometimes sex with three people. 

Harry didn’t care about love or romantic gestures or caring about a person enough to check up on them the next day or to call them round again. He didn’t even have very many friends.

Until he met him. He met the boy with the sad blue eyes and the blonde hair that was slowly fading brown. He met Niall, with the pretty smile that didn’t come round too often. He met Niall and found that the boy was beautiful, both in and out. Niall had a laugh that would fill an entire room, and it took Harry five months and twelve days of hanging round him before he ever heard it.

He learned Niall’s favorite color was green and that his favorite sports team was Derby. He learned Niall’s favorite songs. He learned Niall’s favorite book (some kind of poetry thing written about an undiscovered artists known as Z.M.). He learned that Niall leans left when taking pictures and that he rocks on the balls of his feet because he can’t stand still. 

He learns Niall over several years. Picking up on the little things about him. He learns Niall likes raglan t-shirt and Vans shoes and he always wore a bracelet on his left wrist. He learns the moles that dot Niall’s neck and form a sort of triangle and the birthmark on the back of his left thigh. He learns that Niall can play guitar. He learns that Niall is more relaxed when it rains. He learns Niall’s favorite restaurant and his bad habits and the seventeen different colors that make up his eyes. 

Harry learned everything about Niall. 

But he also learned things about Zayn. He learned about his inky hair and how when he smiled he pressed his tongue to his teeth. He learned that Zayn had a scar on his left eyebrow because Niall had gotten wildly drunk and was starting a fight with some Spanish man in a pub in Paris once and a shard of glass had caught in Zayn’s eyebrow. He learned that Zayn had a big family with four very pretty sisters and an even prettier mum. He learned that his mum came round once a month to Niall’s flat and had dinner with him.

He learned that Zayn taught Niall how to love. And eventually, Niall would teach Harry how to love. Niall would teach Harry about romantic gestures by bringing him breakfast in bed and missing his own favorite TV shows to watch the Derby game. Harry would learn how a real kiss feels. Warm, soft, safe, and loving. Harry would relearn sex with Niall. It was infinitely better, knowing that he loved Niall. 

And that’s the strangest thing of all. Because Harry learned how to love Niall, and in some sort of way, learned to love Zayn as well.

Harry fell in love with a broken Niall, whom fell in love with Harry. But Harry knows that Niall will never love him as much as he loved Zayn. And Harry knows the ache that sits behind his ribs that’s cause lies in the fact that he’ll never get to love Zayn either. Or thank him.

Thank him for teaching Niall how to properly love.

Because all Harry knew before Niall was sex, and all Niall knew before Harry was true love. And somehow, with Zayn’s help, they came together and learned how to be happy again.


End file.
